Max Payne 3

I'll get straight to the point: Max Payne 3 is not a revolution in cinematic storytelling in games. It's another iteration of the same formula we've been getting since the invention of the cutscene. Story sequence plays, guys spawn and you shoot them, cue another story sequence, then more guys and more shooting. The cutscenes and the gameplay never influence one another, other than said shooting taking place in a room you saw in the cutscene. And to boot, Max's narration isn't even delivered that well, with frequent instances of awkward cadence and word emphasis.

With that said, the gunplay is pretty good, ... sort of. Max picks up a reasonably diverse set of weapons from downed thugs, and using these revolvers and shotguns and rifles et al with Max's trademark Bullet Time technique can be super satisfying, especially when special kill-camera animations are triggered. But there are flies in this ointment too -- many enemy encounters are severely lacking in cover, and sometimes (unarmored) enemies take just a few too many shots to the chest to take down.

There's a neat recovery mechanic where, if you take a fatal shot, you can recover by killing the guy who shot you; but it uses one of your painkillers (healing items) in the process, so once you expend those, the mechanic simply disappears.

I also have to mention a cool bug where Max can get stuck in cover -- unable to move, unable to shoot, waiting for death. This happened to me four times in the first level, and once more before I finally gave up. It's been a known issue for ... almost three months? Really?

Max Payne 3 feels like a big waste of 30 GB of my disk space (I can only guess most of this is from the game's Kojima-sized cutscenes). Although I only got an hour or so in, I have no interest in pushing farther.

Progress: Gave Up -- Chapter 3